


Mum and Dad

by VinHampton



Category: Original Work
Genre: Child Neglect, Childhood, Father-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Original Character(s), POV Female Character, POV First Person, POV Original Character, Past Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 04:03:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1730465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinHampton/pseuds/VinHampton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About Vin's parents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mum and Dad

My Father was an angry man, but only in private. You wouldn’t think it if you were a guest at one of his parties; then, Albert was made of charm. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders and a round middle. I always remember him that way - in a perfectly pressed dinner jacket with a cummerbund that made him look rounder, and his fingers curled around a round-bottomed glass of amber-coloured liquid. His mouth always smelt of drink, and so did mother’s. 

They were by no means a well-matched pair, but certainly an attractive one. Father had brown eyes and thick eyebrows and a stern face, and was almost 50 when I was born, but he carried himself like a young man and danced from guest to guest, greeting, smiling, charming. He had a full head of greying hair and when he smiled, it felt like he was smiling at you, letting you in on one of his many secrets. “Vivienne,” he would purr, in front of his guests. “Won’t you play for us, my darling daughter?”

Mother must have loved him once. All the women did. He was full of compliments, acted vulnerable around them. They all wanted to pamper him, just like his own mother had. I asked her once, when father was away and she was in the bedroom, painting her nails red. I was only eleven, but I knew. Of course I knew about the affairs and the drink and the beatings. “Maman,” I asked; “Do you and Father love each other?”  
“What a stupid question from such a stupid girl,” was her reply. It was her long way of saying no. No, she didn’t love Father. And Father did not love her. If I could pull her back now, if I could bring her back, I would ask her again, and ask her why she stayed and lived in her unhappiness for so many years. Was there a part of him that loved him? Had she promised never to leave him? Was she more afraid of what the world had in store?

Better the devil you know. Father was a devil, but like everybody else, he must have wanted love once. I do not believe he was without emotion, even though he did not cry after mother died. I did not cry after she died, because I had cried too much for her before, when I needed her to be my mother. I lost her long before she died. 

My mother was a beautiful woman. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be her. Jeanne had long dark hair and brilliant green eyes, and skin the colour of almonds. She was tall and slim and her movements were studied and cinematic - a throwback to the French movie stars of her youth. When she was happy, she would rest one hand on her chest and throw her head back, laughing melodiously. She did this less and less and less. Her legs were long and tanned and she had slender fingers and polished nails, and diamonds on her ears, her wrists, her fingers. I wanted her small waist and her round hips, and her plump, pouting lips. 

I would draw pictures of her in crayon. I would sit and play the piano for her. I would sneak into her wardrobe when she was out and put on her heels and dresses, and pretend I was her, holding one of her long cigarettes, unlit, between my fingers as I flirted with my reflection in the mirror. In the beginning, she loved me. Not always, but often, although my time with her was measured and limited. She often sat with me after school and made tea for us both. I would talk and talk and talk, and she would listen, her gaze unfocused and faraway. 

“...and Miss Charlotte says that next year, we will start to learn French. But I said I already spoke it, because my Maman taught me. Isn’t that right, Maman?”  
“Mm? Oh, yes dear. Sera mieux que les autres.”  
“Oui, Maman. So Miss Charlotte said that I can choose another language instead if I wanted, because I am clever. Do you think I am clever, Maman?”  
“Mhm, Vivienne. Clever.” A cigarette lit. A plume of smoke. Her distracted look lost on me. 

But slowly, she took that away also, and I only saw her at dinner, or on the rare occasions she invited me to sit with her in her room. I was not there to witness her changing, and Mike must have known to keep me away. I realise now it was a lot more complicated than Mother not loving me. My Mother was ill, I think, and whether my father made her that way or not, he did not try to help her. All I remember were the tantrums and the arguments. I remember the doors being slammed, and Mother crying, and I remember snippets of phone conversations in French through closed doors, until Mike would carry me away. 

I spent so many years after she died hating her for rejecting me, but I never tried to understand why. I don’t think I ever quite will; nor will I know if I was the reason she stayed where she did, or if I was the reason she stepped off that chair under her tree. 

I remember things she said to me, and I remember the dead look in her eyes when she said them. Like, topless and staring at herself in the mirror, she beckoned me to her and made me touch the scar on her belly, where she had been opened up when I was born. 

“Do you see how ugly you have made me, Vivienne? Do you see how you have ruined me?”  
“You are not ugly, Maman.”  
“I do not forgive you for this, do you see?”

Or, one evening, only a couple of months before she died, how she glared at me from her armchair, her face red with drink and her words slurred. 

“I never loved you, do you hear me?”  
“Leave me alone.”  
“No you listen. I never loved you. Do you feel that, Vivienne? Don’t you ever be a mother. Tu détruiras tes filles.”  
“Allez dormir. Go to sleep, you drunk. ”

I felt it. I feel it now, though I felt nothing when I found her, nor for many years following that. 

For so long after she died I did my best not to be her, and I am still afraid of her blood in my veins. I wish I could bring her back and understand her, although she would reject me even now. But these days I see her when I look in the mirror, down to the scars, although I wear many of mine with pride, and not with resentment. I wonder sometimes whether she would tell me I deserved everything I lived through, if she were alive to hear my story, or if she would try to stop me from going down the same road. I wonder whether she ever swelled with happiness when she was carrying me, like I did with my Olive, for a little while.

I think about her a lot, these days, because I want to be a mother, but I do not want to be like her. And yet I am - I have repeated so many of her mistakes, that this last one terrifies me. Will I sit in my chair and lash out at my daughter? Will I yell that she will destroy her own children one day, like we all do? And if my Mother had been a better mother, would I be anything like the woman I am today?


End file.
